Re: Linux Router & Fwall - old bios - wont mount root
- From: Kevin Nathan <knathan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2008 22:08:44 -0700
On Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:47:21 -0500
Bob Bob <bob3bob3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The native disk geometry is 4092/16/63. The partitions are arranged in
order boot/swap/root. Both boot and swap are well within the first
1024 cylinders.
/boot is the only one that you need to have with the first 1024
cylinders. Once GRUB has loaded the kernel, the kernel takes over the
drive detection.
It has about 30MB of boot and maybe 256 of swap. (I fell into a low
memory problem once before with depmod needing 220 or so to run.)
Total space is about 2.1GB.
2.1GB is a bit small, but I am assuming you are only installing a non-X
system, minimal install. Make sure you start with the absolute minimum
of software to be installed -- some packages can pull in a lot of
dependencies. With 9.3, you should be able to do about a 500MB install,
IIRC, without too much 'trimming'.
I am getting the impression its a 2.6 problem with support for SIS
5311 chipsets. I have seen a few web comments on that, but nothing
overly helpful. One could argue that if it boots the kernel then the
controller has beens seen, but it probably does that all with BIOS
calls.
In general, the kernel does not trust BIOS settings. To see what kinds
of things over which you have control at boot time, see:
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
I see two possible causes;
- A 2.6/5513 controller support problem. I never see a succesful probe
in the dmesg like output. I am aware that you can make a manual probe
at the kernel line but how to force its use?
Of that I am not sure -- there might be some help in the kernel
documentation directory (specified above). If you don't have it on
another box, make sure you have the kernel source installed.
- A geometry issue such that when root gets mounted the kernel cant
find it.
I would tend to think that is not the problem. Rather than a geometry
issue, it could be a disk error problem. Re-reading your first post, I
realized I missed this section:
The first error that comes straight after "Freeing unused kernel
memory" is [1] Illegal instruction mkdir..... After that it gets a
pile of mknod and insmod failures
which seems to indicate that you have a problem with the disk. It could
be a physical error or, for some reason, the disk is mounted read-only.
I've seen the read-only problem a few times at work on some client
Kubuntu boxes (could not create files and dirs in /dev and/or /var
directories at boot) and an fsck fixed it most of the time. When it
didn't, it was a physical error on hard disk -- when we had time to
check.
If you can, put the drive in another box and force an fsck on each
partition. If there is no problem there, completely wipe the partition
table and rebuild it during the install on the target machine.
--
Kevin Nathan (Arizona, USA)
Linux Potpourri and a.o.l.s. FAQ -- (temporarily offline)
Open standards. Open source. Open minds.
The command line is the front line.
Linux 2.6.25.11-0.1-pae
9:46pm up 6 days 1:36, 19 users, load average: 0.20, 0.45, 0.59
.
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